Help Jakson and his family ease struggle

JAKSON has been through more in his 12 years than most people in this world. His mother Yoshe Hodgkinson tells how her world changed when she was told her son was going to be born with a severe disability, but still to this day there is no official diagnosis. Now this Currimundi family needs help to make life more comfortable for Jakson. She shares her story ...

IN 2002 I fell pregnant with our son Jakson.

At my 19-week scan I was told he had fluid on the brain.

I had an MRI and an amniocentesis done to find out how bad our little man was.

We were given a 75% chance he would be normal, and as an optimist, I thought they were great odds in having a relatively normal child, as he was a "soccer player" in my belly.

Jakson was born and we thought he looked good, but by seven weeks we knew something wasn't right.

He would scream all the time and sleep no longer than 15 mins at a time, night or day.

Yoshe Hodgkinson is seeking donations to help buy a specialist van to help her son Jackson get around town and to his appointments in his wheelchair.

Yoshe Hodgkinson is seeking donations to help buy a specialist van to help her son Jackson get around town and to his appointments in his wheelchair.

So I was exhausted and couldn't find the energy or strength to raise Jaks sister who grew up and learnt how to run the household at the age of four.

She was our glue that kept the house running.

We spent three years in and out of the Mater Children's hospital in Brisbane with chest infections, pneumonia and researching what our little man had.

All we could be told was he had low muscle tone and a neurological disorder, but to this day we have no name for his disability.

He has had every known test from muscle biopsy to detailed testing of his chromasomes, everything had come back clear.

We even sent his tests over to Holland who specialise in diminishing grey matter around the Brian, but nothing there either.

Life has been one struggle after another as with no "label" as such we have very little way of getting help. We almost lost Jakson twice, once with swine flu and the other time after we were encouraged to give him the flu shot.

Today he is 12 and with five operations including spinal rods to save his lungs he is growing into a very heavy young man. As Jakson gets older we are finding it harder and harder to lift him in and out of the car.

This is where a specialised van would come in handy.

As neither of us are able to work full time due to the care of our little man, there is no way we could be able to get a loan, the day to day struggles of affording anything remotely close to the van we want is out of our reach.

We are desperately seeking help please, we need a van that we can wheel Jaks straight in, in his wheelchair. T

he car we have we will need to sell as when we disassemble his chair and put it in the back we can't fit anything else in the car.

A van would give us the ability to have Jaks in his wheelchair and be able to have the rest of the family in the car too.

We love to go on outings to the beach with Jaks as he loves swimming in the ocean, going to the park and even visit family. We also have the need to get him to specialist appointments which is increasing and we are struggling, to make it to Brisbane.